I think I can save you all the effort of pondering this one… the answer is: it depends.

It depends first and foremost on the scope of your survey. A new report – breathlessly relayed in Road.cc – says that road cycling is more dangerous than mountain biking.

But.

Dig a little deeper and the study reveals a sample size of 149 visits to the Emergency Trauma Department in Parc Tauli Hospital between 1st November 2020 and 31st October 2021. That’s Parc Tauli near Barcelona!

So what we are really looking at is a fairly narrow survey of injuries to predominantly male riders occuring at a time soon after people had been cooped up for months with lockdowns.

Not only that, but Barcelona is not far from the road biking holiday hotspot of North East Spain. I’d like to know how many of those riders were tourists or new cyclists and how many were club riders versus touring riders or commuters.

About two thirds of the injuries were to ‘mountain bikers’, yet the remaining third of ‘road cyclists’ tended to present with worse injuries. Lower extremities, head, neck, thorax, spine and abdomen injuries all tended to be worse for road cyclists.

Not a surprise

This to me is not a massive surprise. I am not tempting fate when I say that mountain biking inherrently entails a more considered approach to risk.

Helmet coverage is broader, body armour is often used, outright speeds tend to be lower and mountain bikers do not ride in close quarters with each other or traffic. Before anyone quips, yes I do have a bad habit of riding too close to people in front!

In contrast, road cyclists are likely to ride in close proximity to each other, with little time to react to hazards. If the cyclists are club riders then you get the competitive element too.

There’s no body armour, very little protection and generally higher speeds. Add in long distances and you also start to introduce issues of fatigue. And ultimately, there’s the problem of mixed traffic with bigger speed differentials on shared roads.

From that perspective it’s probably no surprise to hear that road cyclists tend to come off worse when events occur. Even so, I think the basic concept of road riding – be it commuting, touring or sport riding has a much more benign expectation of injury to casual observers.

Not massively helpful

I’m not sure these surveys are terribly helpful.

Location, infrastructure, local culture and rider profiles play such a large part that these sort of headlines serve only to reinforce in people’s minds that cycling is dangerous, full stop. This is very much not the case in absolute terms.

Cyclists are of course vulnerable.

The hazard of injury is ever-present while little thought is given to understanding the risk of injury occurring. Rather than focusing on the outcomes it would be better to understand the causes of injury in order to mitigate those risks.

Or maybe, given their omission from these statistics, we should all just be riding gravel bikes??

About the author

Matt is one of the founding Molefathers of the Muddymoles, and is the designer and main administrator of the website.

Having ridden a 2007 Orange Five for many years then a 2016 YT Industries Jeffsy 29er, he now rocks a Bird Aether 9 and a Pace RC-627.

An early On-One Inbred still lurks in the back of the stable as a reminder of how things have moved on. You can even find him on road bikes - currently a 2019 Cannondale Topstone 105 SE, a much-used 2011 Specialized Secteur and very niche belt drive Trek District 1.

If you've ever wondered how we got into mountain biking and how the MuddyMoles started, well wonder no more.